Every winter within the upstate New York village of Saranac Lake, a shimmering fortress of ice rises above the shore of Lake Flower. Constructed block by block by volunteers from ice harvested from the frozen lake, the Ice Palace is the centrepiece of the 10-day-long Saranac Lake Winter Carnival, an annual occasion that lifts spirits and attracts guests throughout a number of the North Nation’s darkest and coldest days.
One of many oldest occasions of its type in the USA, the carnival has been offering levity within the depths of winter for greater than a century. However, just like the village itself, its historical past was formed by illness and struggling.
Take a stroll round Saranac Lake and you may discover its density of Victorian-style houses with lengthy porches. From the late Nineteenth- by way of mid-Twentieth Centuries, these porches would have been occupied, year-round, by individuals bundled up in blankets taking within the cool mountain air. However they weren’t there only for a vacation. By resting on the porches of these houses, referred to as “remedy cottages”, they have been hoping to deal with their tuberculosis by way of the “recent air remedy”. At present, the carnival, which was created to supply distraction for these sufferers, and the cottages (dozens of that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places) are reminders of the tuberculosis (TB) trade that took root in Saranac Lake and helped to construct the village.
In 1873, Dr Edward Livingston Trudeau was recognized with TB, a extremely contagious illness with no identified remedy that was then killing one in seven individuals in the USA. Trudeau left New York Metropolis for Saranac Lake, 300 miles north within the Adirondack Mountains. “[Trudeau] wished to get out of the town and simply go someplace peaceable… actually anticipating to die,” stated Historic Saranac Lake government director Amy Catania. Whereas in Saranac Lake, nonetheless, Trudeau discovered that his well being improved. It appeared there was one thing within the air.
